FOR THIRTY YEARS you were my support and my strength. I would rely on you in the most mundane of matters.
In a grocery store, I would call you on the mobile phone and ask you something stupid like, The rice you wanted, there’s ten thousand varieties here, white rice, brown rice, Thai rice, Roma rice, bomba rice, jasmine rice, long grain rice, medium grain, short grain, and so on and so forth, and you would tell me which rice you wanted and I would proceed with the shopping.
When we were apart, for whatever reason — you in Michigan looking after your elderly mother, or me alone in a cabin in New Hampshire trying to come to grips with my son’s suicide — we talked on the phone every night, and I longed to hear your voice, and be encouraged by your strength, and heartened by the beliefs in your soul.
And now I don’t have that and will never have that again, and I don’t know how the hell to go on without it.
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